"And indeed, the burden of Cassandra's "gift" is evident in mythology. She predicted the outcome of many disastrous events. In one memorable example, Cassandra announced the dire consequences of the Trojans accepting the infamous Wooden Horse from their Greek opponents. But as Apollo made certain, no one believed Cassandra when she warned her companions about the future. And this, in the end, was to be Cassandra's tragic fate."

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The end of Hillary's Potemkin village

On January 7th, I speculated on the possibility of Hillary withdrawing from the race based on reports from insiders. Those stories were premature, but only by a little more than a month.

It appears now that Hillary cannot win the nomination. Commenters at Politico.com have done the math. Even if she wins PA, Texas and Ohio, she will not have the necessary delegate total to win the nomination, unless she maneuvers some convention trick that will leave the party in disarray. The piling on has begun. Writers are finally acknowledging the obvious. James Carville has sounded a pessimistic note about her chances.Tonight, Drudge posts an advance excerpt from the New York Times' Thursday edition:

NYT THURSDAY: Clinton's advisers acknowledged it would be difficult to catch up in race for pledged delegates even if she succeeded in winning 3 states on which she is most pinning her hopes: Ohio and Texas in March and Pennsylvania in April. Dem party's rules would be decided obstacle in efforts to catch up to Obama before voting phase of nominating process ends later in spring... Developing...

These type of statements are not made unless the candidate is doomed. Hillary can see the handwriting on the wall too. My prediction is that Hillary will not wait for the convention. Rather than endure months of defeat and piling on, Hillary will withdraw from the race prior to the convention. The Pennsylvania primary, even if Hillary has not withdrawn by that point, will be an anti-climax. I will go out on a limb and predict that Hillary will withdraw prior to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Either the smaller primaries will outweigh Hillary's gains in Ohio and Texas, or Hillary will lose one of those big states.

[Of course all of this analysis depends on MSM/DNC reports and insiders.]

When the end comes, there will be endless discussion of why her campaign failed, with endless explanations focusing on white noise. The real question is not why Hillary's campaign failed, but why it ever seemed real in the first place. Hillary is one big nothing. She has no accomplishments. She is devoted to one thing -- her own advancement and ambition. If she were a man with no connection to Bill Clinton, she would be indistinguishable from ordinary bureacrat wannabes. Her candidacy and career have been entirely dependent on MSM/DNCsycophancy. She has turned herself into a Potemkin village.

Peg Noonan touched upon this idea in December, but only in relation to this campaign instead of Hillary's entire life:

This thought occurs that Hillary Clinton's entire campaign is, and always was, a Potemkin village, a giant head fake, a haughty facade hollow at the core. That she is disorganized on the ground in Iowa, taken aback by a challenge to her invincibility, that she doesn't actually have an A team, that her advisers have always been chosen more for proven loyalty than talent, that her supporters don't feel deep affection for her. That she's scrambling chaotically to catch up, with surrogates saying scuzzy things about Barack Obama and drug use, and her following up with apologies that will, as always, keep the story alive. That her guru-pollster, the almost universally disliked Mark Penn, has, according to Newsday, become the focus of charges that he has "mistakenly run Clinton as a de facto incumbent" and that the top officials on the campaign have never had a real understanding of Iowa.

Peg Noonan was right, but not just about Iowa. The above paragraph is a microcosm of who Hillary is. Hillary spent her entire public life in a series of simultaneous evasions/publicity stunts. If the term "evasions/publicity stunts" seems like a contradiction, consider the following :

- In 1994, she made headlines because she wore pink to a Friday afternoon press conference timed to avoid tough questions on Whitewater.- Ten years ago almost to the day, she created the label "vast right wing conspiracy" before a fawning Matt Lauer who could do no more than toss her softballs.- In 1993, she appeared in a fashion magazine photo shoot while her health care task force attempted to dispose of our freedoms in secret.- She placed her name on a large autobiography that reaped great publicity while saying nothing of substance [the innocuousness of which was later used against her when she attempted to claim credit for accomplishments that were not mentioned therein].- Hillary's autobiography sold many copies while saying nothing, at the same time that her actions more closely reflected the plans touched on in the college thesis that she tried to hide for so many years.- She notoriously decried the "politics of personal destruction" while plotting in secret to destroy enemies.

This is not simply a list of scandals - although she has plenty of those in her background. Hillary's public life has been a series of empty gestures, spin and window dressing, all of which exist side-by-side with something Hillary needed to evade. She has spent her life evading and hiding. She gives new meaning to the phrase "hidden in plain sight." Few past presidential candidates have been so well known yet so little understood.

Years from now, we may wonder how she got so close to the seat of power. Her opponents may wonder what they were so afraid of for so long. In fact, her power existed purely as a projection of MSM/DNC spin and the self-fulfilling prophecy of polls. It is only in this age where so many wait to be told what to think that a Hillary could appear to prosper for so long. Only after decades of the welfare state could a large portion of the population be rendered so pliant that a candidacy based on smoke and mirrors would seem viable.

This is what socialism is really all about. Socialism is not merely an economic theory or a dictatorial type of government. Socialism implies the remaking of the individual in a way that wipes out his very individuality. Socialism prevents us from acting or thinking without the sanction of the crowd. Socialism takes the most private activities and makes a public spectacle out of them. The sexual revolution is one of socialism's greatest accomplishments. Sex has been taken out of the privacy of one's bedroom and made into a public commodity, where monogamy is treated as old-fashioned and "free love" has reshaped our lives. In the same way, the choice of candidates has been socialized. Choice, itself, has become a communal process. Polls could not retain their power to create bandwagon effects in a nonsocialized society. "Focus groups" instead of "focus individuals" are candidates' tools of choice. It is not merely our doctors that the left wants to socialize - it is our minds.

Hillary is not the real villain here. It is our own tendency to support the inevitable winner that is the villain. It is our own desire to gravitate toward power - or the appearance of power - that is to blame. Rather than analyze Hillary's debate strategy, we should remember every time we asked "can he/she win?" instead of "what does the candidate believe?".

It is our own willingness to follow a trend that encourages those who would claim ownership of that trend. In the end, we can see that Hillary was foisted upon us by those who took advantage of our own "follow-the-leader" mentality. If we ever learn that we can say "no" without wondering whether others are saying "no" too, we will be immune to the Hillary's of the world.

It took 16 years for us to acknowledge that the emporer has no clothes. We will not have that much time when the next "Hillary" comes along.